


Grossly Codependent

by howboutinotdothis



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: ???? - Freeform, Jared POV, M/M, but its more he's jealous about the friendship thing, connor is an asshole jared is an asshole evan is an asshole, i dont know, ooc as fuck because i havent written for deh in months, theyre all shitty friends, ummm i guess this could be considered unrequited kleinsen, unhealthy codependence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-18 04:25:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11283705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howboutinotdothis/pseuds/howboutinotdothis
Summary: Now, here Jared is, cleaning out his stupid fucking minivan with Evan, one half of ConnorandEvan, because the other half is out of town at his stupid science camp again and Evan’s junior park ranger bullshit just ended and Jared just got back from camp a week ago and all of his other friends are too busy to hang out, so there’s no reason to not spend time with Evan aside from the fact that Evan’s being gross and codependent with Connor and not him. And he’s not upset about that.Really.He’s not.





	Grossly Codependent

**Author's Note:**

> i dont know why i wrote this also who the fuck is jared i dont know him
> 
> also i dont go in depth in evan's social anxiety/depression or connor's depression because jared is kind of out of the loop for that shit so ye

“This is disgusting.”

“You’re disgusting.”

Jared’s retort falls a little flat as his hand finds its way into a mound of a sticky, gooey substance that smells like peanut butter but has the consistency of Jell-O and he lets out an ungodly squeal, pulling back the offending appendage, unsure if he should be concerned or intrigued that the skin that made contact with the maybe-peanut-butter-maybe-ketchup-maybe-the-blood-of-his-enemies is tingling uncomfortably.

The expression on Evan’s face is hovering somewhere between offended—because, yes, of course, Evan is going to take that seriously, why wouldn’t he, it’s not like Jared couldn’t make it any more clearly a joke—and amused. At least _someone_ ’s enjoying this experience.

“You know, if you’d just cleaned your car out last weekend—”

“I was busy last weekend, I told you that, I didn’t have the _time_ —”

“—Jared, I don’t think staying up until three in the morning playing League of Legends and then sleeping for twenty-four hours should be considered ‘being busy,’ I mean you didn’t _have_ to do that—”

“OhmygodcanwepleasejustgettingbacktocleaningmycarJesusChrist,” Jared cuts Evan off, diving back into the backseat of the minivan before Evan can start in on him again for the fifth time that morning. Honestly, Jared’s regretting asking Evan to come help him clean out his car—all Evan’s done since he got there was complain about the sad state of the aforementioned vehicle and insult Jared’s time management skills, neither of which have been particularly helpful in getting the car clean.

Jared can hear the soft shuffling of Evan’s sneakers on the concrete as he tries to figure out what to do next. He should probably throw Evan a bone and ask him to grab the fast food wrappers off the dash or toss the receipts that have been accumulating on the passenger seat for approximately the last two years, but Jared is annoyed and when he’s annoyed he’s particularly asshole-y and tends to let Evan stew in an awkward silence for a while in some passive aggressive attempt to punish his friend for annoying him, which is probably kind of fucked up, but like. Jared does a lot of fucked up stuff, so what’s new, you know?

There’s the soft sound of the passenger side door popping open and the rustling of crumpled receipts as Evan picks them up and drops them in the oversized trash bag Jared’s mom thrust at them when she heard they were going to be cleaning his car. Jared can feel the niggling of something like guilt deep in his chest, but, at this point, it’s not like Jared can exactly start being a good friend and apologize for being kind of douchey and start conversing with Evan like a normal human being without a chip on his shoulder for something that isn’t completely Evan’s fault, but that’s he’s convinced himself lies entirely on his friend’s shoulders. He’s gone too far down the road of being a shitty friend to turn back now.

They work in silence for a while, and Jared can practically _feel_ Evan getting more anxious by the second and he knows that any second now Evan is going to mutter a half-assed apology, not so much because he’s actually sorry but because he’s scared that Jared is going to decide that this minor disagreement is the final straw in their friendship and that he’s just going to—what? Walk away?

It’s kind of weird, knowing that Evan feels like he’s just going to abandon him when he’s more or less stuck by him for this long already. Sure, Jared’s been a dick to him for a large portion of their friendship, but he’s always been there for him. Maybe not in public or after school or before school or on the weekends—okay, so, yeah, maybe Evan’s fears aren’t entirely unfounded. Maybe Jared did try to ditch him in high school. But, that didn’t work, so.

So.

Wow, okay, Jared’s an even bigger asshole than he thought. Huh.

“Sorry,” the word comes out quiet and tight, offered in an attempt to get Jared back to joking and tossing homework from freshman year that Jared would swear he didn’t even _do_ in Evan’s face.

Jared may be an asshole, but Evan—Evan’s a real glutton for punishment, isn’t he? He should’ve found someone else to befriend when Jared started being particularly mean, but he didn’t. Not at first, at least. And maybe that wouldn’t be such an issue if Jared thought—if Jared thought for even a _second_ —that Evan stuck by him because he liked _Jared_ and not because he just desperately wanted to be able to say he had one friend. Their friendship is more about Evan trying to convince himself that he’s not a total loser than about them being compatible. Jared may be an asshole, but Evan is an asshole too because only assholes would use someone they consider a friend as nothing more than someone to prop up their shitty self-esteem. And Jared’s a big boy, so he’s not going to cry or whatever about Evan using him, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.

They were good for each other once. Jared would do stupid shit and talk a mile a minute and make jokes that went over the other kids’ heads and Evan would stick by him when Jared would get in trouble, spending many a recess in elementary school inside in time out because Jared was an idiot who didn’t know when to quit. Evan would laugh at his jokes—this awkward, breathy chuckle—even when he didn’t get them. Evan would let him drone on and on, would let him spew bullshit like it was his job, would let him talk his ear off and would actually _enjoy it_. Back then, Jared couldn’t imagine a future where Evan wasn’t his best friend. He imagined them fucking owning middle school and high school together when he was feeling optimistic and, when he was feeling pessimistic, he imagined Evan getting his head shoved in a toilet or getting pushed in gym class right beside him, sticking by him through thick and thin.

Then Evan got caught up in his head and he withdrew. That’s the word his mom would always use when she’d try to explain why his best friend wasn’t speaking to him. Evan was “withdrawing” from Jared, pulling away from him and into himself.

Jared never realized how alone he was without Evan until his friend stopped speaking so much, stopped being his partner in crime, stopped being the Evan he’d known practically since birth. Sure, Evan had never been particularly talkative when Jared wasn’t around, but Jared never in a million years imagined that Evan would start acting reserved and nervous around _him_. They were practically attached at the hip—wherever Jared was, Evan was, and wherever Evan was, Jared was. They were EvanandJared, not Evan and Jared, spaces included. Half the time they’d coordinate their sick days just so they didn’t have to waste away in school without each other. Their moms would chastise them for it, throwing out words like unhealthy and codependent when they’d discuss them behind their backs, but they’d always let them get away with it in the end.

So, Jared was lonely and the other kids were stupid and didn’t get his humor and just wanted to talk about dumb stuff like vampires or sports and he spent the majority of middle school languishing in silence, sitting across the lunch table from someone he didn’t think he could really consider a friend anymore, wishing things could just go back to how they were.

Of course, Evan started opening up to him again in their first year of high school, thanks to the counselling and medication and whatnot, taking the first few steps to getting back to something like normal, and Jared was supposed to be there for him. He was supposed to welcome his friend with open arms and go back to being EvanandJared and pretend Evan didn’t fucking _abandon him_ in middle school like he was nothing—no, not nothing, less than nothing, whatever that is.

He didn’t.

Jared started in on Evan, feeding him bullshit about how they weren’t friends, they’d never been friends, they were _family friends_ , there’s a difference, and he made friends who weren’t really friends, more like people who liked to keep him around to be the butt of their jokes, and he let Evan eat lunch alone in the library and work alone during partner work and spend his school days by himself. Jared felt justified the first few months of high school, like he was giving his friend exactly what he deserved. Sure, when his mom found out what he was doing, she yelled at him until she was blue in the face, guilting him with stuff like “I raised you better than this” and “I can’t believe you’d be so cruel” and so on and so forth, but Jared told himself she didn’t get it. She couldn’t possibly understand what it was like to have someone—to have someone just stop being there for you even though they were still there. Evan had always been right there. But not in the way that counts.

By the time Jared decided that Evan had gotten his comeuppance and that he would deign to be friends with him again, things had gone too far. Evan flinched when he’d pick at him, eyes round and wide and hurt like he really believed Jared meant it, and he would duck his head and mumble some excuse about why he couldn’t come over to Jared’s house this weekend, usually something weak and transparent like needing to catch up on homework when Jared knew for a fact that Evan was obscenely far ahead in all of their classes. Evan would talk in this awkward, halting way, tripping over his words and backtracking through statements and avoiding eye contact like the plague, and it was. It was just so.

It was pathetic.

Their friendship was suspended in this weird state of being where Jared wasn’t sure if what they were to each other could be considered anything with a positive connotation like friendship. The unhealthy codependency was long gone, replaced with suppressed anger and resentment and something like guilt, but not exactly. They tiptoed around their issues and suffered in silence and grew farther apart by the day until Jared woke up and realized that he didn’t think he could confidently say he knew Evan Hansen and he didn’t even know if he wanted to be able to.

Then—because things can’t just go to shit, everything just has to go to fucking hell—came Connor fucking Murphy alongside Zoe fucking Murphy, and Jared couldn’t decide which one he hated more.

Zoe Murphy was pretty, he guessed. If you liked the whole “I only listen to indie music and drink ethically produced coffee” kind of thing. She played guitar in jazz band and wore floral blouses with jeans that had stars on their cuffs or dorky Star Wars t-shirts with leggings, and Evan was head over heels for her. She was nice and kind of sarcastic and Jared likes to think if he met her in a situation when his friend-or-ex-friend wasn’t panting after her like a dog, he’d like her, or at least tolerate her.

The same cannot be said about Connor Murphy.

Connor Murphy was, first and foremost, a huge dick, but he was also a ginormous gaping asshole.

Just his appearance pissed Jared off. He kept his hair long and it’s this dark brown color that’s about twenty shades too dark to go with his ghostly complexion. Jared made more than a few jokes about Connor never seeing the light of day, but he’s still yet to find an audience for the standup routine he has prepared that is entirely comprised of jabs at Connor Murphy. He could go all day, honestly. Connor was the epitome of a doom-and-gloom angsty teenager who probably had a Tumblr where he ranted about how everyone sucks and how much he hates his upper middle class life in the suburbs. His wardrobe seemed to consist entirely of black hoodies, black shirts, black skinny jeans, and a scuffed pair of black combat boots that Jared would bet his entire allowance came from Goodwill because it’s “edgier” to thrift clothes than buy them firsthand when you’re a sad kid who lives in a house that costs somewhere in the ballpark of a million dollars. He even painted his nails black and Jared has no problem at all with guys painting their nails—fuck gender roles, guys can have dope nails too, et cetera, et cetera—but the way Connor did it grated on him like nothing else.

Now, Jared probably wouldn’t have associated with Connor besides throwing a couple insults his way now and then if Connor had just minded his own fucking business when he transferred into their school in tenth grade instead of trying to ingratiate himself with Evan like a fucking pathetic loser thirsty for friendship.

Okay, so, maybe that’s not an entirely accurate description of what happened, but the point still stands that Connor should have kept to himself. Instead, he ended up being bumped up from college track to honors classes because he’s smart or some shit, meaning he was in Evan’s smart kid classes instead of Jared’s slightly less smart kid classes, which provided him an opening for befriending Evan. Which, you know, he didn’t take until halfway through sophomore year because—well, Jared doesn’t know why, he’s not an expert on Connor fucking Murphy, damn. All Jared really knows is one day he came to the cafeteria to eat lunch with his asshole friends and found Evan sitting in the corner, picking at his lunch, with none other than Connor Murphy across from him. He saw Evan flinch when Murphy said something mean, saw the way Evan shrugged it off when he apparently apologized, saw that tight smile Evan always gave when his feelings were hurt but he didn’t want to discuss it.

Suddenly, he was seeing them everywhere together. Connor would awkwardly stand by Evan’s locker while he grabbed his books, sometimes stepping in with a longsuffering sigh and an eyeroll when Evan couldn’t seem to get the stupid thing open, wrenching the door open with more force than necessary and usually slamming the locker door against the locker beside it and drawing the ire of all the students loitering in the hallway to talk between classes, making Evan duck his head in embarrassment. Evan would lean against the wall beside the water fountain when Connor would stop to get a drink, shuffling and playing with the hem of his shirt and occasionally huffing out a laugh when the taller fountain would be occupied and Connor would have to lean way the hell down to drink out of the shorter fountain. When Jared had office duty during study hall and had to take a note to Honors English, he would see Connor and Evan sitting beside each other in the back row, Evan trying and failing to pay attention to the teacher as Connor slid slips of paper on his desk, making him smile and press his hand against his mouth to try to suppress his laughter.

Of course, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. There was an entire week where they seemed to be avoiding each other, Connor glaring at Evan when he’d pass him in the hallway, knocking their shoulders together aggressively, and Evan would have the horrible scared expression on his face that Jared recognized from when he’d make jokes about him—he was afraid of losing Connor, of being alone again. Evan asked Jared to come over to his house that weekend. Jared accepted the invitation, figuring that, if nothing else, he could get a good story out of it. Find out what the hell had happened to make Connor revert to his natural state of assholeness.

Apparently, Evan had let it slip that he liked Zoe—because of course Evan would let that slip to the girl’s overprotective, possibly homicidal older brother with documented anger issues—and Connor had apparently taken that to mean that Evan was only spending time with him to get closer with Zoe, which was kind of what Jared thought he’d been doing, but the dejected expression on Evan’s face seemed to say otherwise. Jared had an opening then. To get back into Evan’s good graces, to pull Evan away from Connor and back to him and their unfulfilling friendship that did more harm than good for either of them, to return things to the status quo where Jared and Evan and Connor were all miserable like they were supposed to be because guys like them have no business being anything close to content in the hell that is high school.

Instead, Jared creamed Evan in a few rounds of whatever video game he was obsessed with at the time after making Evan download said game onto his prehistoric PC, threw a few hurtful comments his way, and told him to go make up with his boyfriend or whatever because Jared had better things to do than listen to Evan complain all night. Evan’s quick denial of any romantic feelings between him and Connor and the look on his face that said the opposite made Jared’s stomach churn uncomfortably.

Things were back to the way they were before on Monday.

Jared didn’t ask how Evan got back into Connor’s good graces.

Evan didn’t offer up any information, merely extending his gratitude awkwardly when he caught Jared by his locker after school one day, telling him that no, he didn’t need a ride from Jared again today, Connor was going to give him a ride home, and thanking Jared for coming over on Saturday, before heading off to the library where Jared knew he and Connor would spend the time Zoe was in jazz band practice talking and doing homework like the homework-doing nerds they were.

Not that Jared knew where they were all the time. He only knew the library thing because one of his friends made him go print out his paper for him after school one day and he stumbled across Connor and Evan whispering at a table, Connor clicking his pen again and again in a way that was too deliberate to be unconscious while Evan surreptitiously glanced at the librarian, apparently trying to figure out at what point they would catch her attention and get lectured for being loud in the library. It was stupid and completely unlike Evan to purposely enter into a situation that would involve conflict, but it reminded Jared of the old Evan, the one who would help him put a sign on some kid’s back that said “I’m a doofus” or glue his fingers together because Jared, for some reason, thought that would help him swim better.

The whole Zoe thing remained a point of contention for Evan and Connor, but none of their subsequent arguments about it were nearly as serious as the first one and Connor seemed to not mind so much when he realized that Evan didn’t have a chance in hell with his sister, even if he was friends with Connor. Honestly, being friends with Connor seemed to decrease his chances with Zoe since Connor was just as much an asshole at home as he was at school.

Evan still sent those weird, puppy dog looks at Zoe on occasion, but, by the end of sophomore year, he’d resigned himself to the reality of the situation and came to the conclusion that he and Zoe were never going to happen. Or so he told Jared one day over the summer while Connor was away at his weird science camp, throwing tennis balls at people’s heads for the sake of physics, or something. Jared couldn’t tell you why he hung out with Evan while Connor was gone, when Evan made it crystal clear once again that he wasn’t friends with Jared because he liked Jared but because he didn’t want to be alone. Maybe it was because he missed Evan. Maybe it was because he was jealous. Who knows? All Jared can say is that it was fucking stupid because the moment Connor was back, Evan was off with him, fucking around at that abandoned orchard he snuck Jared into one night, telling him about how he and Connor would go out there and climb the trees or just kind of chill, or hanging out at Connor’s house and reading Connor’s emo poetry or something.

They were even more grossly inseparable junior year. It reminded Jared of him and Evan back in elementary school, and it was annoying as fuck. Connor—Mr. Doom and Fucking Gloom, Edgar Allen Poe Is My Favorite Poet, I Eat Puppies for Breakfast, I Listen to Evanescence Unironically—would flash Evan these little lopsided smiles and he’d look like an actual normal person for once, like someone without a permanent scowl etched into their face and bags under their eyes that had their own bags. It was weird.

Of course, there were still bad days when Connor would be a complete asshole and Evan would accost Jared after school, asking for a ride home with a downcast expression, staying silent for the whole drive home, but there were less of those. Connor started trying to be—not nice or pleasant or polite really, but not so rude. Jared started seeing Zoe talking to him and Evan in the hallway, looking every inch a girl conflicted about whether she should forgive someone for past wrongdoings. He’d heard through the grapevine—not through Evan because Evan would never talk about that kind of thing with Jared—about death threats and screaming and the proverbial skeletons in the Murphys’ closet.

The process was slow going, and Jared would still see Zoe yell at her brother in the parking lot or avoid him in the halls and see her face crumple as Connor said something soul-crushing or pushed her too hard to be friendly, but not as much as he used to, and he’d caught a glimpse of her sitting with Connor and Evan at lunch once or twice, expression tired and angry and sad, but it was obvious their relationship was improving. At least a little. Even to someone like Jared who was about as out of the loop as someone could be, it was clear that they’d never be the type of siblings to exchange good natured banter and tell each other about their problems and whatnot, but they might be able to at least get to a place where they can stand to be around each other. Might being the operative word because if Jared knew anything about Connor Murphy, it was that he was shitty at not fucking things up.

Somehow, he managed to not fuck things up too bad with Zoe by the end of junior year and he did the opposite of fuck things up with Evan. Their weird, unhealthy, codependent friendship had evolved into a weird, unhealthy, codependent relationship, which. Was a thing. That happened. It wasn’t obvious—clearly they couldn’t do much at school because people already treated Connor like shit, they didn’t need to add on the bullying for being the Gay Kid to the harassment he already had to deal with—but Jared had been observing their relationship for a long time in a totally not creepy, entirely justified way, so he noticed the tiny changes. Plus, he saw them making out in Connor’s car once before school. That was an experience he wouldn’t like to relive, thank you very much.

Now, here Jared is, cleaning out his stupid fucking minivan with Evan, one half of ConnorandEvan, because the other half is out of town at his stupid science camp _again_ and Evan’s junior park ranger bullshit just ended and Jared just got back from camp a week ago and all of his other friends are too busy to hang out, so there’s no reason to _not_ spend time with Evan aside from the fact that Evan’s being gross and codependent with Connor and not him. And he’s not upset about that.

Really.

He’s not.

A small eternity has passed since Evan apologized, so Jared picks up a balled-up piece of paper that he knows for a fact has gum in it and throws it at Evan’s face, smiling when he hears a squawk that means that Evan was totally not expecting to be pelted in the face at that moment. “Wow, Evan, I didn’t realize you were part parrot.”

Evan’s cheeks are red and he’s stuttering out a firm denial about the being part bird thing, and Jared feels that weird bit of guilt dissipate when Evan throws a used tissue at him, expression turning horrified when he realizes he just had his hand on a dirty tissue, rubbing his hand on his pants’ leg furiously.

Yeah, Jared doesn’t miss being inseparable with that fucking loser.

Not one bit.

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos/constructive crit are welcome, my dudes


End file.
